Poem by Maria Jane Jewsbury

Faded Flowers

Ah! well beseems,
Us, the strong insects of an April morn,
Steady and constant as the thistle's down
When winds are on it to cast away
Sweet flowers because they are not amaranth.
Samor.

Faded flowers,
Sweet faded flowers,
Beauty and death
Have ruled your hours,
Ye woke in bloom but a morn ago,
And now are your blossoms in dust laid low.
But yesterday
With the breeze ye strove,
In the play of life,
In the pride of love;
To and fro swung each radiant head,
That now is drooping, and pale and dead!
Delicate flower
With the pearl-white bells,
No more shall dew-drop
Sleep in thy cells!
No more rich rose on thy heaving breast,
The honey-bee fold his wings and rest!
Fair myrtle tree,
Thy blossoms lie low,
But green above them,
Thy branches grow;
Like a buried love, or a vanished joy,
Linked unto memories none destroy.
Faded flowers,
Sweet faded flowers
Fair frail records
Of Eden's bowers,
In a world where sorrow and wrong bear sway,
Why should ye linger? Away! away!
What were the emblem
Pride to stain,
Might ye your glorious
Crowns retain?
And what for the young heart bowed with grief,
Were the rose ne'er seen with a withered leaf?
Ye bloom to tell us
What once hath been;
What yet shall in heaven,
Again be seen;
Ye die, that man in his strength may learn,
How vain the hopes in his heart that burn.
Many in form,
And bright in hue,
I know your fate
But the earth to strew,
And my soul flies on to immortal bowers,
Where the heart and the rose are not faded flowers.

1. The Oceanides. No. 7. The Spirit of the Cape
2. The Oceanides. No. 4. The Sunken Rock
3. Address to Sleep
4. Lines Written after Reading Sir Edward Seaward's Narrative
5. The Oceanides. No. 3. The Burden of the Sea

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